2017-12-30 Seven new publications:

Although the publications have been put on the site before the New Year, the writing of the blog post has been delayed a little – my apologies.

FUNDRAISING

Our fundraising brought in 4.836 USD in 2017. Thank you, thank you! That’s really close to our goal! Oopsie, I forgot to take down the green banner! I’ll repair that as soon as possible. The next fundraising campaign will start in September, but anyone wanting to give it a good start, feel free to do so!

NEW PUBLICATIONS

24 plates with Dutch folk art motifs, for needleworkers. 12 plates contain cross stitch motifs taken from antique samplers, the others show cookie shapes, bent iron work, and embroidery patterns from clothes. Preceded by the flyer which announced the publication.

From the collection of Mary Fennema, published by kind permission of the copyright holder, Vrouwen Van Nu.

In my haste to get things published, I forgot to check the pdf size. Promptly after publications, problems were reported with downloading and we can guess why. Therefore here also the links to smaller pdfs

Nr 1 of a series of handbooks about antique needlework techniques. This book is about open-work and darning. It belongs to the plates 01 and 02 of the collection mentioned above. Scans donated by Seya Wijnsma, published with permission of the copyright holder, Vrouwen Van Nu in The Hague.

From the item listing (the item may even still be for sale): A stunning, rare early Victorian loom seed beaded mourning necklace with pendant. Each decorative piece is connected by 8 strands of beads. The seed beads are black faceted glass and faceted brass. The brass seed beads being those that detail the motifs of flies or bees and outside edges of the connecting strands. They also form the laurel leaf motif on the pendant. Images donated by ebay seller danie_pach.

Single sheet with handpainted pattern of a lovely heelless slipper. The background is half black, half not painted. The slipper motif is brown leaves with blue flower buds. Image donated by Atelier HB in Austria.

Folder with 74 plates of 60×80 stitches, all cross-stitch and tent stitch patterns “for school and home”, and a small text volume explaining techniques and design principles. Very rare book. Quite a big pdf as well, which is why there’s three links to partial pdfs added. Scans donated by Franciska Ruessink, charted by Franciska Ruessink.

FUNDRAISING

Yes, I keep on asking for donations, in order for the project to survive and flourish. Especially for those Workbaskets! If you value our work, and you can afford it, we are grateful for every dollar. And I mean it: those 1 dollar donations are as welcome as the larger ones. Many grains of sand a mountain will make!

Donate now to support the Antique Pattern Library project to pay for such things as database and website development, web hosting costs, data entry, scanning equipment, and help us meet the public funding ratio, which allows us to keep our nonprofit status, making your donations tax-deductible, depending on where you live and on the local tax laws and tax treaties.

Scan donations count too! They save us room (for the books) money (for the shipping price and customs duties), and time (for scanning).

And if you are an Amazon customer, you can also support us via Amazon Smile. If you click on the Amazon link before you start shopping, Amazon will set aside a little bit from their profit on what you spend and give that to us.

Donate via Paypal:

The limit of small donations is yet to be determined, we will start at USD 500. It increases if we get more small donations. That’s the limit to what you can donate per year and still have it count towards the small donations. It’s recalculated every year. If you donate more, the IRS puts your donations on the other side of the public funding ratio. So, if you were planning to donate just above the limit, give some to another organization, buy a cup of coffee and donate just the limit amount.

On the other hand, we are looking for people who can afford a one-time larger donation to support our goals for the coming year, which will cost us some money.It will help speed up our publication rate, and make more time available for the actual library work, which is sadly suffering, because we as Board members have to spend more time than we like on bookkeeping and IRS compliance and stuff like that. Necessary, but it cuts into the time we have for the Library. Your donations will help us hire help for the elementary tasks and for editing.

If you can’t afford to give anything, which also happens in these difficult times, introducing the Library to people who don’t know of it yet, is very useful, since it broadens our user base and therefore also our donor base.

Anything you donate for the Library, goes to the Library. If you don’t mind it going to cover our overhead, mark your donation to NMA General. To give you an idea of what your donation would do: USD 10 pays for our hosting costs for a month (at the moment) or an hour of administrative assistance. USD 50 allows us to take one of our RESERVE publications and release it for publication. USD 100 pays for 1TB backup for the scans and edited files. (Currently we have 5 TB data.) Larger donations in the past have paid for fast A3 scanners, website help, and hours of editing, as well as a start with putting our Library records online in a way that they will show up in professional library searches.